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Wednesday, 7 August 2013

Hats Falling Down

I heard a three-year-old today complain to his mother that
his hat had falled down.It was an
epiphany.Now I understand what drives
the usage mavens and letter-writers to say things like “25 words or fewer.”

I once read an article on how children learn language.First they copy what they hear and so say
things like, “My hat fell down.”

Then they learn RULES.They learn that the past tense is formed by adding “-ed.”Simple.Except English is not simple.English is full of exceptions, and the
so-called rules don’t begin to encompass it.

One year in school they taught us “i before e except after c,” but that rule is violated all the
time, which made me scratch my head because in those days I liked to follow
rules, and yet I knew how to spell “weigh” and “neighbour.”

A friend of mine one time recited an extended version of the
rule, which said, “i before e except after c, or when sounded like a,
as in neighbour and sleigh.”

But that still doesn’t account for “weird” and “seize” and I
believe a lot of others.

Nowadays the language experts and those they have cowed into
submission go around saying that you must use “fewer” with all countable
nouns.So you have to say “fewer books”
(sounds natural), “fewer than three books” (sounds barely okay, but a bit
prissy), “three books or fewer” (who would say that if they didn’t think they
were supposed to?), and “one fewer book” (oh God no, save us).

They have forgotten that the English language is full of
exceptions.The rule, or really just a
rule of thumb, was to use “fewer” with countable nouns EXCEPT when mentioning a
specific number.So standard English
would be “less than three books,” “three books or less,” and of course “one
less book.”

Now that I’ve read Moby
Dick I have one less book to read on my list of classics.But sigh … the three-year-olds have taken
over, and they want us to read one fewer book.Soon they will want us to say we falled down or runned away.After all, the rule says to use “-ed” to form
the past tense.Every three-year-old
knows that.Sigh.